


Rot

by glassgoblin



Series: Carol's Word-A-Day Calendar [48]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 15:38:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3901690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassgoblin/pseuds/glassgoblin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl, Carol, Michonne and Carl look for supplies in a small hospital.  Drabble, part of a series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rot

It was a small hospital, for a poor county, but they were still hopeful that some supplies might have been left in the maternity area. They needed things for Judith that were not always so easy to find, mostly because they had been ruined by the elements as people scavenged for other items. The hospital had been a good find, in a small town, and without a lot of through traffic they might still find something.

Carol held a large flashlight, turning it off whenever they reached an area lit by the large windows, and her knife was at the ready. Daryl was on her left and Michonne ahead on the right, as they moved slowly through the building. The doors had been shut and nothing had responded to their knocks, but there was always a chance that a walker had gotten trapped somewhere inside or was just slow to respond to the sound. They brushed things out of the way on the floor as they moved, mostly small debris from the panic people had when everything went to hell.

Carl was following them with a medical cart. Every time they found something useful it went onto the cart, and he had grabbed a few small bins to keep the little things from falling off the flat top. It made them move more slowly, but they didn’t want to miss anything that could be used later.

Daryl stopped in front of a vending machine, hitting the front Plexiglas with the side of his fist. “Anyone want a candy bar?”

Michonne shorted and looked toward Carl. “Wouldn’t hurt to clear it out. Carl, you want to do that while we finish this floor?”

He nodded, “Sure,” and picked up his bat. He started hitting the front of the machine as they moved past and down another hall. The noise was considerable, but still nothing seemed to notice from within the building. It seemed like they were having a lucky day when a shadow moved across a doorway to a treatment room, and they were instantly at the ready. A skeletal walker, wearing pink scrubs reached out through the doorway, but couldn’t get out past a crash cart that had blocked the door. Stringy blonde hair covered the dead woman’s face, and Daryl shook his head before stepping forward and putting a knife through its skull.

The three exchanged a look before nodding and continuing, and behind them there was the sound of the glass breaking. “Maternity should be up ahead on the second floor.” Carol studied the map near the stairway and traced the path, “Do we want to knock for walkers in the stairwell?”

Michonne glanced back toward where Carl was still. “Maybe we should split up. We can’t take that cart up the stairs; too much work to get it up there and back down again. I’ll take Carl and hit the ER, if the two of you can go up together?” She grabbed several sacks from the nurses’ station that sat a few feet away. They were the kind of cheap bag given to patients to put their street clothing in when they needed to wear a hospital gown. “Here, in case you find anything.”

Carol shrugged, and accepted the bad, “Alright.” She opened the stairway door and shone the flashlight inside, but nothing moved. Daryl rapped on the side of the doorframe with his bow, the metal ringing slightly, and they both took a step back as Michonne walked down the hall toward Carl. When nothing happened for a minute or two, they both looked at each other again.

“Might as well go for it.” Daryl went in first, and Carol tried to shine the light ahead of him, but mostly cast his shadow on the wall before them. He opened the door to the second floor slowly, trying to be quiet, and held a hand over his face as soon as the door was opened wide enough for them to get through.

Carol covered her nose, pinching her nostrils closed as the smell of rot overwhelmed them both. She had to turn her head to the side in an attempt not to vomit, and the flashlight jittered slightly. It was a moment of weakness and they both pushed past it, not wanting the other to be overly concerned, and then they were in the hall.

Large windows were at either end of the hallway, and a visitor’s room was in the middle, so there was more natural light than they had expected. Nothing was moving in the hall, so they pressed on toward the nursery area. Carol had hoped they would find baby supplies there, and she knew they would find other things that they would rather avoid. There were a lot of things that they had to face rather than avoid now though, so she had mentioned it briefly to Michonne and Daryl before they entered the building. They had always planned on keeping Carl from seeing it, and Michonne was troubled by the idea of it as well, so it was good that she had stayed on the first floor.

Carol knew that Daryl had found the nursery by the way he froze in place down the hall, his shoulders tense and his hand dropping from his face. “Here. Got your bags?”

“Yeah, I can do this, if you want to stay out here?” Carol moved toward the window, where families would have gathered to look in at their new babies. She glanced inside, glad it wasn’t well lit. It was still bright enough to see that there had been babies left in their little bassinets. Something moved along the floor also, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to look at what it was.

“No, I gotta help. There’s something in there.” He opened the door, using the shoulder of his shirt to cover his mouth for a moment, and they waited for the moving creature to come to the light they were letting inside.

Carol almost sighed in relief when it turned out to be an adult walker, not ready to face a baby that had been turned yet. The dead man pulled himself along the floor, reaching out toward them pathetically, and she stepped around it to put it down when it had cleared the doorway. “I’ll go in, you hold the door.”

She filled her bags quickly, ignoring the diapers that would be too small, but grabbing baby medicines, lotions, pins, thermometers, and other multipurpose items instead.   Judith was getting too old for a lot of this, but Carol worried that if someone else had a baby they would need this sort of supply, and there was always the chance that the group would find others with similar needs. She glanced toward the bassinets again, cringing, and then walked quickly outside. Daryl was leaning against the opposite wall, and he straightened as she returned.

“Ready?”

“Yeah, let’s get out of here.” She swung the bags over her shoulder, the straps around her arm, and lifted her flashlight again. “I need some fresh air.”


End file.
